Saturday, October 13, 2007

honey heals what ails ya!

one of the classes i took at the conference was healing with honey. i had already read up about about its ability to kill the mrsa infection and knew of its power to heal cuts but i was still amazed after taking this class. lately, intuitively, i've been eating raw honey and feeding it to my 3 year old. turns out, taking 1 teaspoon 3 times a day 30 minutes before eating will kill candida, something that i'm always battling and i suspect my 3 year old is too.

studies have been done in new zealand using honey to treat 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree burns, gangrene, diabetes and many other diseases, testing honey against huge name drugs and honey blew the socks off of them all.

when treating a deep wound, there is no need to clean the site first as the honey will draw out all the debris. it is recommended to fully pack the wound with honey, soak a gauze pad with more and tape over the wound. unless it is oozing a lot of fluid, the bandage only needs changing once a day. honey will pull the debris out, remove the necroses from the site, heal the skin from the inside out and offer some pain relief.

research has been done to prove using honey effective in many types of wounds including surgery incisions (which are healed w/o the use of sutures) and perineal tears just to name a few.

placing a drop of honey in each eye once a day can help with night vision, improve eyesight and dryness. i am currently testing this out myself. as the herbalist who taught it stated, it burns like the dickens for about a minute but then starts to feel good. i have even noticed the severity lessening with each treatment. i'll be updating on this trial after doing it for a month.

i have also successfully treated sore throats with turmeric and honey and used it when i and my three youngest children had whooping cough this summer. honey has been proven to kill strep and staph infections so any time there's a sore throat, you can bet it will be part of the artillery.

from now on, i'll be reaching for honey whenever there's a wound in sight. i may start making a few herbal honeys just for future use (st. john's wort would be a great one!).

eta: here are some great links from the waikato institute in new zealand on their honey research:

In addition to great herbal honeys (Elderberry makes an excellent one as does Wild Rose) you can also make really great elixirs. Like with the Wild Cherry post you commented on, you can do 3/4 brandy and 1/4 raw honey to make a sweet and very healing brew. This works better for certain plants than syrups, Cherry (as well as Peach leaf and Elderberry tend to have some of their constituents zapped by heat.

i am sorry to hear about the death at your son's school. that would be scary to have it so close to home.

basically, honey is applied topically to a wound site that may/does contain mrsa. the typical course of application would be to fill the wound (pack it as much as possible) with honey, soak a gauze pad with more honey, cover the wound and then bandage the gauze on. this only needs to be changed once a day unless it is seeping then it can be changed more often.

use raw honey. no pasteurized crap from the grocery store, go to a health food store or locate a local beekeeper.

if you do a google search for 'honey mrsa' a load of information will pop up. most of it will mention manuka honey which comes from new zealand. the reason most information points to this is because the waikato honey research center is the only place to do such research and they used their own variety of honey. personally, i feel that the honey in your own area would be most effective but that's just my gut feeling.

for more information, go to their website:

http://bio.waikato.ac.nz/honey/honey_intro.shtml

i'm not good at links, i hope that went through. if not, google 'waikato honey new zealand'

they will give you all the lowdown on how honey is effective against mrsa and many other types of bacteria when all other antibiotics are failing.

Hi, I found your blog through Kiva's. I'm so glad! I love hearing what other herbal folk are up to!Thanks for a great description of honey uses in healing. SO many tools to healers that we've forgotten! I've put honey on burns (cast iron burns pretty ouchy!) and it is remarkable at killing the pain and healing the tissues. Kiva's elixir recipie rocks!! I highly suggest making them! So easy and so delicious!

Thank you Tansy. I thought it should be raw but wanted to make sure. Lil' man had stepped on a nail -which only went in a small bit. He luckily had his tetanus shot just the month before. The doctor wanted to "dig around" in it without doing an x-ray and put him on antibiotics-just in case. I remembered your post & refused the procedure. The pain he would have gone through from them prodding and digging (without even doing an x-ray to confirm anything was in there and saying it was needless to do one) upset me & petrified him when they mentioned it. instead we have done the honey and am very happy to say it pulled a few small black flecks from his croc shoe that the nail punctured within the first 48 hours.This was just after reading this & everything is healing very well. Thank you again.~Tammie

"This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof." -Neil Gaiman

2015 Homestead Focus
-keeping the chickens and turkeys out of the garden
-straighten up the wild and unruly gardens
-growing more grains (millet, oats) and storage crops (root veggies, winter squash)
-purge excess junk in the house and shed